


Trapped in a Rainstorm in Central Baltimore

by sheberry (orphan_account)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (a little), Angst, Because he's really injured, Healing, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, I'm warning you, Introspection, M/M, Others as well but I don't want to spoil the surprise!, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, There's not a whole lot of Hannibal in this story, Will Graham has a lot of thoughts, Will Graham needs to sort a few things out, at least the beginnings of it, from the Fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-05-17 07:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14828135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/sheberry
Summary: He came to on a gravel bank, surrounded by paramedics, FBI agents, and Jack Crawford himself.





	1. Chapter 1

Falling didn’t feel like flying. Will didn’t feel weightless; rather, he became aware of the weight of their bodies only when they had already lost the ground beneath their feet. It didn’t feel like peace. Didn’t taste of freedom. It was the sickening sensation of Earth losing its axis. His stomach lurched, and his heart skipped a beat in shock. It certainly did not ‘feel like forever’. It lasted two seconds, and then it was over, and gravity had reclaimed them.

The water was akin to a thousand pinpricks and drove iciness beneath Will’s skin. The impact pushed the last bit of air out of his lungs; it cost him every ounce of willpower left in him not to breathe in. The brackish taste of the Atlantic infiltrated his body anyway, uninvited, entering his mouth and nose and ears. There was nothing but darkness all around him. Darkness and the muffled roar of waves. His wounds burned from the saltwater. After mere seconds his fingers grew numb. His fingers, which held fabric and skin in their grip. How easy it would be, to let go, to let him sink and then follow after him. Death by drowning was always described as a peaceful thing, once you surrendered to it. _No!_... No?

Something spurred Will on, his grip tightening all on its own. He must not let go, must never let go. He had to swim, had to survive. He felt the weight of antlers breaking through his skull, and yet he didn’t feel weighed down by them. Instinct took over; there was no use fighting it. Will Graham was weak and hurt and overwhelmed by his wish to die. The beast within, however, did not accept the fate put onto it by force. It had waited too long to finally taste blood again. Now its mouth was filled with it, even though the blood was its own.

He didn’t know up from down, and yet he kicked his heavy legs, caught in the soaked fabric of his trousers. He broke through the surface faster than expected. His burning lungs gladly accepted the air offered to them, and he gasped for breath. The waves toyed with him, pushed him in one, then in the other direction like a ragdoll, threw him against unyielding rock again and again. His fingers threatened to slip, to relinquish their hold on Hannibal. Not without difficulty he managed to pull Hannibal’s head onto his shoulder, so he could breathe freely. He didn’t. His head hung limply when Will stopped supporting it. Will had no opportunity to move him or lay him down somewhere to free his airways. His feet couldn’t find ground. But when he saw Hannibal’s calmly closed eyes, skin pale and lips blue from the cold, Will was reminded of how that exact picture had been his wish. He had wanted to kill them. He might just have succeeded in Hannibal’s case.

Hauling them to the surface had been entirely useless. The cliff face towered in front of him, and behind him, the Atlantic reached towards the horizon and so far beyond. He knew just how far. He had already crossed that ocean. For now, Will could still tread water, but soon hypothermia and exhaustion would cause his limbs to go numb and leave him to sink. They would drown. There was no way around it.

“It’s better that way,” Will managed to utter through chattering teeth. His beast wouldn’t get its will after all, neither the one inside himself that was still raging and looking frantically for a way out nor the one in his arms that could no longer whisper sweet temptations into his ear, now that life had left it. “Come down with me.” He pressed his icy lips to Hannibal’s forehead, buried his face in Hannibal’s wet hair. Did all he had never dared when Hannibal had still been warm and alive. For one moment alone, he could allow himself to love him.

The water closed above his head. The roar in his ears died down. His heartbeat grew calmer. The shivering of his body subsided. Pictures flared up behind his closed eyelids. He paid them no attention. The life that proverbially flashed before his eyes was not one he wanted to relive a second time.

Will Graham, shrouded in warmth and darkness and, finally, deep, deep peace like a safe cocoon around his tired and worn-out body, lost consciousness.

He came to on a gravel bank, surrounded by paramedics, FBI agents, and Jack Crawford himself.

 

—

 

Will was still sitting in the chair the doctor had left him in after she had finished stitching him up when Jack Crawford entered, a presence not easily ignored.

“Jack?” The sutures in Will’s cheek pulled taut as he spoke. He wanted to flinch, but he managed to supress the urge in time. His words were slurred as though he had something in his mouth he couldn’t wait to spit out. It didn’t keep him from talking. He had gotten used to the discomfort of fresh wounds too long ago.

Jack removed his hat. The brim was wet, fat drops steadily dripping to the ground, forming a puddle on the linoleum floor. It had begun to rain during the night. “Will. For a second down there, we’d thought you were dead. I came here as fast as I could. Thought I’d check on you.”

Will huffed. “A questionable pleasure.”

Jack hesitated at the brusqueness of Will’s tone, but he remained silent. He was waiting for Will to continue, and Will relented. The events of that night hadn’t been Jack’s fault. He shouldn’t take his anger at himself out on a man on the margins. “The pain makes me rude. Sorry.”

“Should I get the nurse? Do you need more painkillers?”

“No.” Will rubbed his hands over his face. His right hand brushed over fresh bandages. He felt the cut smart beneath. He increased the pressure of his touch, hoping that the simple pain of his physical injuries would succeed at distracting him and take all his thoughts away for good. Unsurprisingly to him, it didn’t work. “I want to be as lucid as possible. I’m sure you had a look around the cliff house. You can imagine why I don’t want to slip off into the land of dreams anytime soon.”

“I did have a look around up there. Which is why I can say for sure that you two have been about as sobering a sight as Dolarhyde’s body. You’ve managed to mangle Hannibal quite a bit, Will.”

Will locked up his heart faster than the beast within could cry out at Jack’s words. “I wasn’t the one who shot him, Jack. Besides, didn’t you declare you wanted to kill Hannibal as soon as Dolarhyde was out of the picture?”

“It would have been difficult to justify to the paramedics if I had refused him any help. You know what I would’ve liked to do. You tried it yourself. And then…” Jack fell silent. Displeasure dominated his expression and tugged at his lips.

Will let out a sigh. “Alright, let’s have it.”

“And then there’s you. No matter how hard I try, I can’t quite believe you would have sacrificed yourself to rid us of Hannibal once and for all.”

“Well, you shouldn’t.”

“In that case, all I’m left with is that you wanted to die with him.”

Hearing the simple truth spoken aloud for the first time had Will shuddering. “I know I have to account to you for what happened with Dolarhyde, Jack, but not for what happened after. My decision was my decision.”

“You know it wasn’t. Questions will be asked, and I have no idea how to answer them. It was difficult enough to backtrack on the articles we wanted to send out about Hannibal’s escape and the role you played in it. Back when it wasn’t real. Now, I don’t know what to tell them.”

“We’ve been here once before already. They can’t exactly accuse me of anything. I’m not guilty of any crime. I left the crime scene with Hannibal in my position as an FBI special agent for all they know. That was the plan. Dolarhyde was self-defence, that much is clear. You don’t know what to tell them? Tell them the truth for all I care.”

“I’m not sure I know what the truth is, Will.”

“You do. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, Jack. You wanted to convince yourself of something. Are you convinced?”

“I heard your wife will be discharged from the hospital tomorrow.”

Will’s brows furrowed at the sudden change of topic before he understood. His voice grew low, dangerously so. “Do you want to make me feel guilty about anything?”

“Will…”

“Leave. I’m tired. I’ll call you tomorrow if you want to question me officially. It doesn’t have to be today.” Will got up, wincing slightly at his body aching all over, and forced his feet to carry him over to the hospital bed to sit down and stare at the wide glass front that presented nightly Baltimore to him like a still life, its rigidity disrupted only by raindrops hammering on the windows and blurry headlights flashing by on the streets below. For him, this conversation was finished, and Jack seemed to accept that. If Jack Crawford was being forgiving, Will must have looked as miserable as he felt. He hadn’t seen himself in the mirror yet. That Jack had soft-pedalled was all the confirmation he needed that it had to be bad.

He was waiting for Jack to leave his hospital room, but he could hear no footsteps depart. Jack was still standing in the doorway. Will felt his eyes on his back, the air all around him suddenly dismissive and judgemental. He could hardly resent him for it. Will closed his eyes, preparing for the final blow. “They managed to resuscitate Hannibal. But it’s too early to tell whether he will survive. They have him in surgery still.”

“Thank you.” Will’s voice sounded small and broken, his ire dissolved into nothingness. Lost in thought, he did not hear Jack’s departure. Instead, he struggled to remember.

His memories of the last hours were fragmentary at best, hardly anything more than fickle impressions: the thermal blanket that had been draped around his shoulders and the fleece blankets that had followed to prevent hypothermia; the drive to the hospital and the disbelieving looks of the paramedics when he had explained to them he had fallen off a cliff; the young doctor who, upon realising he was in shock easier than he himself had, had tended to him with kind and soothing words while she had stitched muscles and skin back together. Will had come to like her, but she had taken the tiny sliver of peace with her when she had finished her work. Something inside him felt open and vulnerable still, and he knew sutures and cell regeneration wouldn’t be enough to close it.

Will put his arms around himself, but found no comfort in the gesture. _Every time I try to draw a line, the pen is ripped from my hands._ He squeezed his eyes as tightly shut as he could and wished himself back to that house on the cliff where Hannibal was pouring him wine.

 _The rock beneath them crumbled and pulled the house down into the sea along with them, crushed and pushed underwater by debris, without return this time around. Will reached for his gun in time and aimed at Dolarhyde first, then at Hannibal, then at himself. He awoke on the gravel bank before the FBI had arrived and covered Hannibal’s nose and mouth with his hand until the twitching of his muscles subsided. He drowned, Hannibal in his arms, peaceful and no longer alone._ That was how it should have gone. That was the ending he had chosen for them. _But you survived. Didn’t you try to save him? And save yourself? Didn’t you?_

He snapped out of his waking nightmare with a start, looking at his trembling hands in front of him and wondering why they looked _wrong_. It took him several seconds and one of his memory fragments to piece the puzzle together in his mind. How nonplussed the paramedics in the ambulance had looked at him when he had described the turn of events to them. How they had been unwilling to believe him at first. Now he knew _why_.

He let his eyes trail along his arms, uninjured except for the bandage on his shoulder and the adrenaline-induced trembling of his fingers. His legs had borne away a few stray bruises, but no bone was fractured, and no ligaments were torn. They had diagnosed him with a mild concussion, though he didn’t feel it. The headache might as well have come from anything else. He had enough reasons to develop headaches at any given time. No internal bleeding, no ruptured organs. Throughout his career, Will had seen more than one suicide victim who had jumped from a rooftop, a bridge, a cliff. None of them had looked even remotely like Will, after.

The last of his fragmentary impressions of the last hours made itself a home in his mind against his will: Hannibal’s arms tightening painfully around him to pull him closer, one hand coming up to the back of his head, pushing it down.

Hannibal had known he was about to die, and the last thing he had decided to want in his life had been to protect the man who had pulled him down with him, trying to kill them both. He had willingly taken the brunt of the fall, knowing it would likely kill him, if it only meant Will remained alive.

Will turned onto his good side (his _better_ side, because none of his shoulders could be called ‘good’ by any definition of the word anymore) and laid down on top of the blankets, body curled up like a child’s. The pattering of rain drowned out the tiny sobs that began to shake his weakened frame. The tears that managed to run onto his lips tasted faintly of defeat and the salt of the sea.

 

—

 

The rain had not let up when Will was woken by the nurse who brought his breakfast (what little mashed and liquid somethings he was allowed to eat) and checked on his wounds. He warmed his hands on a still steaming cup of camomile tea the nurse had told him not to drink while it was still hot. He didn’t need to be reminded of that, but made no effort to tell her so. Even though the rainfall hadn’t lessened yet, the effect of the painkillers very much had during a night of fitful sleep, and so Will felt his wounds altogether too acutely to form words.

“You won’t have to stay for too long.” The nurse gave him a reassuring smile. “You were lucky.” Again, Will held back from telling her he didn’t feel ‘lucky’. He felt like a ghost, unable to leave the hospital behind when there was something, some _one_ who still bound him there. He felt exhausted, his eyes puffy and sore from crying. He was sure she could see that as well, but was too polite to mention it. Working at a hospital, his weren’t the only dried tears she saw. And he was not the only wreck she encountered. He found some comfort in that thought, but not much.

Armed with a new dose of painkillers, Will decided to wander the hospital hallways. They were white, sterile and bleak, and he was able to shut off his brain. His vision would start to swim from time to time (a belated effect of the concussion), but each time, the feeling passed after a few seconds of closing his eyes and refocusing. The white noise of the rainstorm that was still raging on outside created a not entirely unpleasant hum in the back of his mind. The sound of water, but not of waves crashing against a cliff, of an ocean foaming with anger at the two monsters drifting in its waters. Simply water. Fluidity. Will’s element.

Quietly, he wondered whether Hannibal was still alive. Or whether Jack or anyone would tell him the truth if he wasn’t. When he found his vision swimming again, not due to the concussion, but due to unshed tears, he returned to his room and waited for Molly or Jack, whoever would come to him first.


	2. Chapter 2

It was Molly who came to him. Her right arm was in a sling, but her gait was fast and fierce. Energetic. He saw her storm into the room like an epiphany. She pulled him into a hug with her good arm. Her breath felt hot when her whispered words reached his ears. “God, oh God, Will.”

He returned her embrace, leaning into her, putting his head on her shoulder. The sense memory was still too fresh. His mind conjured up the feeling of fabric, stained almost black with blood, against his cheek. He could smell it, even. The heartbeat that hammered in his ears was distinctly not Molly’s. He was glad when they separated, so Molly could look him over from head to toe, her eyes quickly fixating on his cheek. Her mouth twisted in sympathy.

“When Jack Crawford came into my hospital room, I’d thought I’d lost you. You know, I was watching the news like usual, and then they suddenly get a breaking news instalment about Hannibal Lecter’s escape, and I forgot to breathe for a hot second there, and then they said you were missing. I… God, can you imagine what that felt like?”

_I remember what it felt like._

“It’s fine. You don’t need to talk. I know you probably can’t. God, Will, I love you so much. I love you.” She kissed him, then, and she tasted of home and, faintly, of cheap cappuccino from a coffee vending machine.

_I love you, too._

“Anyway, Crawford came in and told me they’d found you. And you were alive. And then those a-holes wouldn’t discharge me. I raised Hell in there, believe me, but they wouldn’t let me go even a night early.”

Will couldn’t help the smile that spread across his lips, even though he winced in discomfort not a second after. As always, the room lit up with Molly’s presence. He could imagine her easily, standing in the hospital lobby, arguing with everyone close enough to listen, be they doctor or janitor.

“I’m so sorry I’m late. I wanted to come, I really wanted to. Wally is still with Mum and Dad, we’ll get him when… Do you know when you’ll be released? Just hold up your fingers for the days or something.”

Will gave her an awkward one-sided shrug. He really didn’t know. Nobody had talked to him about it yet. The fact that they hadn’t even sent any kind of emergency psychiatric care his way made him believe the entire incident hadn’t even been penned down as a suicide attempt, but rather an accident.

“Anyway, we’ll go home. We’re not going to let anyone take that from us. Okay?”

He smiled, stopped smiling when it hurt, and nodded instead. His eyes had begun to sting again, and Molly saw it. She held him in silence for the remainder of her visit, and yet the warmth of her embrace barely touched him.

He could still look at her light, he realised, but he could no longer touch it. It was as if a wall of glass had been raised between them. As if Molly had swapped places with Hannibal. Hannibal was free, and Will had embraced him without barriers. Was that the price he had to pay for a single moment of indulgence? To never be able to truly feel the touch of his wife again?

He buried his face against Molly’s throat and listened to the rain outside.

 

—

 

He didn’t do it the next day.

He didn’t do it the day after, either. Or the day after that one, although he knew he was just dragging out the inevitable. He stood in the hallway of the ICU sometimes, watching the two FBI agents guarding the door. He didn’t know them, but they seemed young. Inexperienced. Their postures were stiff, and they decidedly made almost comically intense eye contact with anyone who walked by, even if it was only a night nurse. Overzealous. It might have been their first mission after entering into the Bureau. That alone told him enough about the state Hannibal had to be in. Had he posed any kind of danger, they would never have sent two inexperienced agents to bar him from escaping.

As it turned out, their inexperience was a blessing. They were desperate not to make any mistakes and cross their superiors. It allowed Will free reign with them. When, on the fourth day, he came to stand before them and demand entrance, they blinked at the mention of his name and moved aside without wanting to see his identification badge – or even ask whether he was already on duty again at all and not, as one could clearly see, still a patient. That would cost them their jobs, if anyone asked about it. Will found he didn’t much care as he walked past them.

He'd never thought it would be that easy, and now that he was about to enter that room, suddenly all he wanted was to turn back around. He wouldn’t. He pressed down the handle and gave the wide door a gentle push, not knowing what would await him on the other side, yet at the same time realising it would be familiar. _He_ would be familiar.

That time, there was no ‘Hello, Dr. Lecter’, no loaded silence as they gazed upon each other and no taunts being thrown back and forth. There were no words at all, at first. Instead, there was the low whirring of all those machines that kept Hannibal alive, the steady beeping indicating his pulse, and then there was Hannibal, tubes in his arms, hands splayed on the bedspread with his palms up like the depiction of a suffering saint. He was unnaturally pale, violet circles under his eyes like bruises. His skin was truly bruised, covered in haematomas of varying colours. Almost as if he had borne all the wounds Will had been spared. Will’s jaw tightened at the sight.

The thin blanket Hannibal was covered with was just low enough to show a glimpse of the stark-white bandage around his abdomen. After the fall, Will had nearly forgotten about the bullet wound. Hannibal had endured it as if it weren’t there when they had fought Dolarhyde. Dizziness welled up in Will as he realised Jack had been right. _He_ had done more damage to Hannibal than the Dragon. He had nearly cost him his life. _Had_ cost him his life.

Confronted with a hopeless situation, he used to wade into his stream and fish until the murmur of the crystal-clear water and the lively chirping of the birds hidden in the sun-lit grove had allowed him to bar his surroundings from entering into his mind. But the water had turned to blood a long time ago, and the birds chirped a different tune: Abigail’s desperate gasps for air. Unable to escape to that former place of comfort now, Will stepped forward instead, suddenly too aware of his own body intruding into this space against the will of the doctors and nurses, having fudged his way in. Probably against Jack’s will. Against what he knew was good for him.

All hope that Hannibal might be unconscious was dispelled when he opened first one, then the other eye. In any other situation, Will would have believed he had feigned his sleep to give him time to adjust, but Hannibal looked downright feeble. Will’s footsteps, no matter how quiet, had woken him up. His _scent_ , maybe. Somehow, it hurt to think about that.

Will opened his mouth, but his throat was too dry to form any sound other than a faint croak.

It was on Hannibal to fill the silence. “How did you manage to sneak past my guardians?” He spoke quietly. At first, Will thought it was because his voice wasn’t steady enough. It would have been understandable. Hannibal looked more dead than alive. But going over Hannibal’s words, he quickly realised he simply didn’t mean for the two agents to hear what he said.

“I let myself in,” he responded in the same hushed tone, his voice still hoarse.

“Your name still opens doors?”

“It does to those who don’t know me enough.” Then, simply to occupy his tongue somehow before it could form unbidden words: “How are you feeling?”

“Alive enough. Bathing one’s body in dragon blood grants immortality.”

“To some of us more than others, apparently. You died.”

“I returned.”

“To me?”

“That remains to be seen, no?”

And then there it was, having caught up with him completely: the feeling of his lips on Hannibal’s forehead. He wondered briefly whether there was any possibility Hannibal might have felt that kiss. There wasn’t. He had been well on his way to death when Will had been brave enough.

His eyes couldn’t hide anything from Hannibal, and he lacked the strength to obscure his emotions behind a veil of carefully placed manipulations. If he thought about love, whatever sick and twisted variety of it that was, Hannibal could see it on his face as clear as day. And he did. He beckoned Will with one finger. “Come.”

And Will did. He moved closer to the bed, sat down on top of the covers, gingerly, as if he could break all of Hannibal’s bones with a single forceful movement. With every passing second he felt his heart adjust its beating to the beeping of the cardiac monitor until it was in perfect unison with Hannibal’s.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath in preparation. “What you did when we fell down that cliff…”

“I thought you had understood, Will.”

“ _No greater love hath man_ … I know, I know. That explains nothing. You didn’t have to do that. I wanted to kill us.”

“Many believe their wish is to die when, in reality, they want to change something about their lives.”

“It wasn’t like that. I felt I had no other choice. Going forward, what would have been there for us?”

“Then, the world. Now? The needle, for me. What I did invalidated my insanity plea entirely. Alana will not be as accommodating a second time.”

Will pressed his eyelids closed tighter, until there were white dots dancing in the darkness he saw. He spat out his next words. “Try to run.”

“I’m afraid I cannot.”

“What do you mean?”

“I cannot move my legs, Will. I am paralysed.”

The words didn’t register right away, but they prompted Will to open his eyes and turn towards Hannibal. He scanned his face for any indication he had made a terribly distasteful joke, but there was nothing but sincerity. Whatever Will’s face showed of his emotional state had Hannibal continue quickly. “Not permanently. There is swelling that is putting pressure on my spine. It will recede, and I will walk again. Though not for several months. Several months are enough for them to put me to sleep.”

“How can you even stand to speak to me? How can you not look for something to slice me open with? I know I would want to, if someone had… hurt me like that.”

“I would have endured worse. If to die is all that is left for me, it is an easy enough task if the last word I remember before crossing that final border is ‘beautiful’.”

Will’s eyes widened. “You won’t.”

“Won’t what? Remember what you said to me?”

“ _Die_.”

“If nothing has succeeded in killing me until now, there is nothing that could?”

“I have succeeded. I won’t lose that triumph to anyone else.”

Hannibal’s dim and tired eyes lit up suddenly. A small smile tugged at his dry and chapped lips. His voice had regained its mocking tone. “In about three minutes, someone will come to check on me. You should not be here when that happens.”

For a split second, Will wanted to grip Hannibal’s hand, squeeze his fingers. His courage faltered before he had even finished formulating the thought in his mind. “They likely won’t let me in here a second time. Someone will tell them not to.”

“I know.”

“Sleep. Save your strength.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. But do it. You’re the last person who is allowed to give up.” _Because if you do, there truly is no point anymore._

As Will readied himself to get up and leave, he was surprised by the brush of fingertips against his wrist. It stopped him in his movement, but it wasn’t enough to make him turn around again.

“How is the wound in your cheek?”

“Healing.”

“The one in your shoulder?”

“Healing. Faster, even.”

“Good. Leave now.”

He did.


	3. Chapter 3

Lying to the FBI was easy. At first.

Lying to Molly was harder.

She came by every day, and still Will couldn’t find any words to say to her. Thoughts were all he had, but she couldn’t read them, couldn’t even guess at them. She misinterpreted his silence as pain, and she misinterpreted his pain as physical. She misinterpreted the way he flinched when someone mentioned Hannibal Lecter in his vicinity as disgust, and she misinterpreted his disgust as dissatisfaction with the hospital food, prompting her to bring food with her whenever she visited. He had never felt so out of tune with her before.

Maybe, he wondered, Will Graham had truly died in the Atlantic Ocean that night. Maybe part of him lay down in those depths, somewhere on the ocean floor, being fed on by sharks and salt water. The part that had been able to be happy with Molly Foster. The part that had been able to resist. The strongest part. Just as the strongest part of Hannibal seemed to be missing as well.

He wondered about Hannibal, too. As predicted, there was no way to see him again. The day after he had visited him, the young agents were replaced with older, more experienced ones. When Jack came by that afternoon, his face was hardened, but he didn’t mention Will’s visit with a single word.

Sometimes, Will would stand in the hallway of the ICU again, farther removed from that door so as not to draw too much attention to himself, watching whoever happened to walk by. Three days into that habit, using Molly’s favourite expression for any such situations, ‘shit went south’. Doctors would enter Hannibal’s room more often, clad in increasingly protective gear. Cut off from any source of news, Will could imagine the worst, though deep down he knew the answer to the hell breaking loose around him. Having had an abdominal injury himself, he’d been told about the risk of infection often enough. One of the nurses uttered that fateful word to another while walking by on the second day: “Peritonitis.” Getting worse rather than better, judging by the frequency of visits by several doctors.

One time, he could hear what he thought was a pained groan come out of that room; another, he was fairly certain he heard the sound of retching right before the door was closed on him again, effectively shutting him out.

In another life, he would have gloated over Hannibal’s misery. It was the perfect payment for months of pain and recovery after being cut open with that curved blade. Now, unbidden images came to him of killing his way through that door until he was by Hannibal’s side again, snatching him away to a place where he would be safe. Where they both would be safe.

But he was nothing more than a ghost. Incorporeal. Incapable of intervening, of changing anything. Ignored by all the nurses flitting across the hallway and never even looked at by the FBI agents guarding the door.

 

 

—

 

 

“We have analysed the recording on Dolarhyde’s camera.”

Jack came in at 7:30AM. Will was up already. He had hardly slept in the last week, and less, even, after Hannibal had fallen ill. He spent his nights staring at the ceiling and wondering whether somewhere, in another room, Hannibal’s heart was beating its last. He’d thought he’d gotten used to the nerve-wrecking feeling of helplessness a long time ago, but it was gnawing at him now with renewed fierceness. For a man who had tried his luck (and succeeded, he reminded himself again and again) at killing Hannibal not a week earlier, he was entirely too worried about his death now.

“Took you long enough.” What else was there to say? He already knew Jack hadn’t come to talk about the visual recording. Whatever him being in Will’s room really meant, good intentions could not be assumed.

“There have been a few questions raised about your involvement in this case.”

“You wanted me, knowing full well what you would get. Will it fall back on you now?”

“Do you know what I had to do to keep them from arresting you on the spot? I had to explain why the man I got on this case decided to call murder in self-defence ‘beautiful’. Why there were no signs of a struggle between the two of you when I had claimed you’d told me you had fought Hannibal and fallen in the process.”

“I can’t feel sorry for you, Jack. Not for this.”

“All I’m saying is that you are moving on thin ice, Will.”

“No, Jack.” The wound in his cheek was hardly holding him back anymore. He realised he could raise his voice, and so he did. “You can’t get out of that without admitting your involvement in _all of it_ , from the _very start_! You delivered me into the lions’ den, _years_ ago!”

“I didn’t force you to side with the lions!”

“And what was I to do, then? Let myself get eaten without complaint, because it was the right thing to do? To not cause a fuss? I did that for long enough. I did that until it nearly destroyed me. Neither of us are in any position to judge the other anymore. That chance has long passed.”

“If I have lost you completely, there is no other way, Will. The Bureau will not care about what you and I know, or about what we have done. Their patience is wearing thin. They are keeping an eye on you. It has come to my attention that you spend an awful lot of time around Hannibal Lecter’s room. People talk. They ask those questions, Will. What you do is dangerous. As the head of the BAU, I ask you to step away from Hannibal for all our sakes. As your friend, I ask you to do it for your own sake.”

“He’s probably about to die, Jack, haven’t you heard? Don’t they inform you on his condition? In a day or two, all this might already be empty talk. Another chance gone.”

“I will never understand how you could miss him.”

“Be glad you don’t have to. Either you or they or anyone send someone to arrest me as soon as you think I have crossed a specific line, or you don’t. I’ll be waiting. Goodbye, Jack.” It didn’t feel final at the time, even though his words suggested otherwise. Little did Will know that there would only be two other times he would cross paths with Jack Crawford.

Outside, the rain was pouring, having started again in the night after a short pause. It would be one of the most rain-swept early springs in Maryland.

 

 

—

 

 

It was night. The lobby was almost empty at that late (very nearly early again) hour. There was a young woman with a boy of about three who was playing on the floor with his toy truck, all the while imitating the drone of a heavy engine with his lips. A man of nondefinable age with flaxen hair, slightly greying, was reading a magazine on orthodontics with more interest than the topic deserved. An elderly Asian lady in a burgundy pantsuit was looking out the window into the rainy night, a peaceful smile on her face.

Will wondered to himself what a child was doing in the hospital at that ungodly hour. A relative who had gotten into an accident, maybe. Worry billowed around the mother. Will could almost taste it on the back of his tongue, mingling with his own sorrow. Her child was still too young to truly understand. He didn’t seem tired at all. A little giddy, maybe, after being woken up in the middle of the night. To him, all that was an adventure. He was oblivious to his mother’s grief. For a moment, Will envied him. He wished he could let other people’s emotional histories roll off his shoulders with the same ease, instead of having to soak them up.

He decided to get himself some coffee from the vending machine in the corner. He knew the coffee was neither good nor particularly strong, but he would drink a bit of caffeine if it meant putting off going back to bed and dreaming. In his dreams, he fell down that cliff endlessly, sometimes with Hannibal, sometimes alone, but the sensation of _falling_ would always make his stomach roll and his heart jump, ripping him from sleep for good.

“Excuse me, could you tell me where the department for radiology is?”

It was the Asian woman who had come up to him. She was polite, but sincerely so. There was grief in her, but it was well-hidden. Old. Not forgotten, but dominated by happier memories. With a bit of concentration, Will could have seen more, but he didn’t want to. When he felt so empty already, the last thing he wanted was to fill that emptiness with other people’s personalities.

“Second floor, I think,” was his reply before he realised he still had his hand stretched out towards one of the buttons on the vending machine. He let it fall to his side, and she followed his movement with her eyes, lightning-quick reflexes betraying the picture of a talkative elderly lady. He could see it was a lie, a poorly-maintained façade, but he decided to play along. He had long forgotten his fatigue. Something had been roused in him, a special sort of caution. Could it still be called paranoia if he had been right about it too often in the past?

“Thank you. Should you be drinking coffee with all that gauze on your face?” The question itself was intrusive, but her tone was neither demanding nor mocking.

“It’s already healing.”

“Good for you, very good. I wish I could say the same thing about my nephew’s injury.”

“He the reason why you’re here?” Will wanted to leave or wanted _her_ to leave, but he felt it would be rude to end their banter so suddenly. She looked like she had somewhere to go, 3AM be damned, and wouldn’t waste her time on talking to him for too long.

“Yes. Do you have people come in here to visit you, or are you alone?”

“I do get a few visitors. But none at that time of night.” His voice was just that side of too bitter for small talk, but maybe that really made the joke.

She gave him a smirk, playing right along. “It is rather late.”

“An odd time to be in here if you don’t have to be.” He tried his luck at a smile, and it barely hurt. Well, the doctors did say the wound was looking better every day, and he was finally beginning to believe that was more than an empty phrase to keep him humoured. “No visiting hours.”

“I doubt they would let me to him, even within the visiting hours.” She shot him a look at that and pulled her mouth up into that perfectly pleasant smile again. _She knows who I am._ The realisation flashed through him, and he blinked. Worse than that, she seemed to expect him to know her as well. And he did not. Until he did. It came to him suddenly, and she could see it on his face. She was pleased.

She turned to the vending machine and inserted a coin before pressing one of the buttons. They stood next to each other in silence, while the machine was processing her order, its rattling all the louder in the silence of the lobby. Will felt like someone had put him into a scene in some absurdist drama. _Waiting for Godot_ , only they were both waiting on coffee or the chance to not speak in riddles. There were things he wanted to say, to ask. But it wasn’t the time. If it was, she would have said more.

A night nurse came by, greeted them, and stared a moment longer than necessary. Had every single person in the hospital been given the order to be overly cautious around him? “Can I help you with anything?”

The woman, whose name was on Will’s mind now, shook her head and gestured vaguely towards the machine. “These are tricky. It’s good to have a young man to help you out.” The nurse bought the lie easier than Will had and left.

The woman picked up her coffee, blew into it to drive out the boiling heat, and took a tentative sip. She twisted her mouth, clearly not having been ready for the taste of her fabricated chance to speak to him.

They were alone again, and Will leaned forward. “Promise me you will get him out of here.”

“Consider it done. We are already doing our best. But it takes time.”

“I don’t know how much you know, but time might be something he does not have.”

She gently squeezed his arm in response, took another sip of her coffee, and left.

 

 

—

 

 

Will had known nothing about where Hannibal’s family could be found on any moral parameter. He knew now. Had been granted a glimpse, at least. They were obviously supportive enough of their wayward relative to save him. And they were at least aware of Will, meaning they had kept up to date on information about Hannibal throughout the years. Somewhere in there, his name must have fallen several times. What picture did they have of him?

By the time the sun was rising, he had figured out who ‘we’ was supposed to be, and from then onward, he kept an eye out for Chiyoh, knowing she would be somewhere around. For the first time in the week he had spent in the hospital, he met the nurses’ eyes when they walked past him, looking for a pair of familiar ones. What he was met with in their glances was apprehension, sometimes disgust. The week had borne a number of articles on the case, and even though Will had looked at none of them in particular, he was acutely aware that right after Hannibal’s and Dolarhyde’s it was his name that was printed on the pages the most. Will was used to people being unsure of how to handle him, but he also knew that this time around, there would be no articles declaring him innocent, the victim of a judicial error.

Quietly, he accommodated the plan. He didn’t spend any more time in the hallway to Hannibal’s room. After finally meeting the right pair of eyes and receiving the slightest of nods in return, he stopped looking into people’s faces altogether. It was an old habit of his, one he had already lost for the most part, but he slipped back into it easily. A pale imitation of the comfort that could be found in old traditions.

Hannibal was on his mind. Little else was, if he was honest. He had promised Hannibal that that wouldn’t be the end for him, and somehow that promise was being fulfilled without Will lifting a single finger. He knew it meant goodbye. Hannibal’s family would spirit him away to _wherever_ , and Will would not be granted entrance. They wouldn’t want him, who had come for Hannibal’s life, to come with them.

Being left behind could feel like a knife to the gut. Will knew that. _Can’t live with him. Can’t live without him._ For a little while, he lost himself in thoughts about how he very much did not want Bedelia du Maurier to be right. About many things.

 

 

—

 

 

When Molly came to him, her hair wet from the rain, even though he didn’t know her to ever forget to bring an umbrella, he realised he had words for her now. Unfortunately, she had realised that as well.

“You weren’t there yesterday,” he began when he received neither a kiss nor a hug.

“I met Jack Crawford in the hallway two days ago, and he told me he’d talked with you. I… didn’t want to see you after that. I mean, I didn’t want to disturb you after he already had his teeth in you, but really, I also didn’t want to see you. You talked to him. You made me believe you couldn’t. Why?”

“I didn’t know what to say to you.”

“Why? And don’t come at me with that bullshit about having changed! Changing is one thing, but it feels like my husband has been completely replaced. That’s not normal, Will!”

“It’s not your fault, Molly.”

“Is what no wife wants to hear. Ever.”

“I told you what this case would do to me.”

“I said no bullshit about being a different man. You were perfectly normal when you called me while you were working on the case! A bit more melancholic than you usually are, yeah, but that was it. You were different when you came to me in the hospital, but you were still _you_. What happened since then?”

“I killed a man between then and now. That’s what happened.”

“I know. I know, Will. Can we still talk, now that I know you can?”

“Okay, shoot.”

“You’ve never been out of the hospital, have you? There are journalists out there. A lot of them, and they never leave. They know who I am. I’ve long since stopped reading newspapers. For _your_ sake. You know that. But they shout questions at me when I walk by. Might just be that some of those questions are hard to get out of my mind.”

Will rubbed his face and sat down on the bed, entirely certain his marriage would be in shambles once he would get up. “What do you want to know?”

“Most of them believe you’re his lover. Are you?” It gave him enough of an idea of the general nature of the questions hurled Molly’s way, entirely undeservedly. He fought the urge to go outside and strangle one or two of the reporters on live television. How much more damage would that do to his reputation?

“No. I’m not.”

“Did you ever sleep with him?”

“God, no. Never even touched him a whole lot.” He could feel the fabric of Hannibal’s bloodied shirt against his skin again and flexed his fingers to get rid of the sensation.

If she wasn’t entirely convinced, she was good at not showing it. Or maybe Will just didn’t want to look at her too closely. “But you were friends with him.”

“I told you that.”

“ _After_. You were friends with him after you knew.”

Will closed his eyes. He wished himself so far away from the conversation they were having he was sure he had already, in his mind, left the continent, maybe even the solar system. But he owed her. He knew he did. “Yes. I was.”

“ _Why_?”

“Bec-”

“That was a rhetorical question. Don’t you dare give me an answer to that. I don’t want one. There’s nothing you could say that would make that okay in any way. He tried to kill us, Will. You can’t speak of him that way. You can’t say you’re fond of him. He wanted to see me dead. See _my son_ dead! You told me you hated it. Hated everything about this. Hated him.”

“I do. God, Molly, you couldn’t hate him the way I do if you spent your whole life trying. You don’t know him like I know him.”

“Can’t say I want to know any more of him.” As if suddenly remembering something, she looked at his belly, apparently trying to picture the scar through the fabric of his shirt. “How did you really get that scar? He didn’t stab you when you found out what he was, right? You lied to me about that. He did it after. Why?”

“It was at the botched attempted arrest. It happened in his kitchen.”

“Did he stab you because you were there to arrest him?”

The words came easily to him now, the way they never did early on in their marriage. “He did it because I betrayed him. I told him I killed a person we both wanted to see dead, and I hadn’t done it. He found out and punished me accordingly. _That_ is the truth.” _With omissions._

“Did he really think you capable of simply killing someone in cold blood?”

“I have killed people, Molly.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“He did.”

“And were you? Capable?”

“I have the scar as proof of my moral fortitude.”

“You were fighting for the good side, then.”

“I’ve always been fighting for my own side, Molly. Too busy with myself to ever choose a side.”

She huffed. “Do I even know you, Will? Did I ever?”

“Wouldn’t you think one and a half years of marriage is an awfully long time to keep that many things hidden from you? It’d get exhausting fast.”

“Not saying something isn’t always the same as lying. It’s funny, you know? I told Wally the same thing once, when we got the dogs to the vet. We wanted to keep it secret from you at first, because we thought you’d be upset. And I told him he wouldn’t have to lie if he simply kept his mouth shut.”

“Then let’s say that’s what I was doing.”

“That’s a very… uncomfortable thing to hear. Like you’re telling me there are parts of you I wouldn’t want to know.”

“You already know there are.”

“You never denied it, by the way. That you might be capable of killing just about anyone.”

“Everyone is. Given the chance, you’d have killed the Dragon yourself. And don’t even try to pretend you don’t want to throw me out the window at least a little. Have to warn you, though. I found out I’m very good at surviving falls from impressive heights.”

Molly was taken aback by his joke. By something on his face. She took a step back, afraid of what she saw. The man joking about what had nearly killed him. The man who had so obviously forgiven the monster that had come after her. He wanted to apologise. Wanted to tell her he really wasn’t himself. He wanted to continue with the half-truths, but she deserved better than that. And she knew it. “I don’t really think we can continue on as… us, Will.”

He had waited for that, had braced himself for feeling sadness strangling him from the inside. What he felt was relief, and he sincerely hoped she couldn’t see that as well. “Wouldn’t hold it against you.”

“You’re not even gonna try to stop me from going, huh?”

“I might if there was any chance for us. There isn’t, Molly.”

“Great.” Her smile was bitter. “I’m telling you I want to divorce you, and you just… break up with me. Good going, Graham, really. Can you at least tell me whether you actually married me for… me? Or whether you just did it so you wouldn’t have to be alone. And be honest. Just be fucking honest with me now, okay?”

“I fell in love with you the day I saw you. I fell in love with you because you liked my dogs and because you weren’t afraid of me. I also fell in love with you because you were alone. I was alone as well. We’d both lost someone. Thought we might give each other some comfort. And we did.”

“But you decided to go back to that monster of yours first chance you got.”

“There was a time, early on, when I told you about Hannibal, where I realised you were trying to save me. From Hannibal or from myself, doesn’t matter. I knew it wouldn’t work, but I didn’t tell you. I liked having you around. Why would I have tainted that? I wanted to forget as well, you know? And that was real. But I’m bad at escaping. And while you were trying to save me, I was trying to save you. From knowing. It’s better to not know.”

“Not true, Will. I feel better now. Knowing.” She was strong. He had always loved that about her. She wouldn’t spend a single night crying over losing him. She was honest with herself, getting angry rather than sad. She would curse his name, and then she would go on with her life, for her son and for herself. He sincerely hoped her shoulder would heal well and never bother her. Never remind her the way his own scars did. _(Who do you belong to?)_

“Me too.”

“I’m gonna go to my son now. I don’t want to be the kind of ex-wife who only talks to you via her lawyer, so we’re going to deal with this like adults and go over the papers together, alright?”

“Alright.” He got up, his marriage in shambles.

Molly nodded, made no effort to touch him in any way. He realised then he would never hug her again, never kiss her again, never wake up next to her again. Will noticed she had her car keys in her hand only when she flexed her fingers around them. As she relaxed them again, she spoke. “I… also fell in love with you when I realised you were lonely.”

“Tit for tat.”

“Mhm.”

“I’m sorry, Molly.”

“If your next sentence isn’t that you’re sorry for having feelings for the man who wanted to kill your family, then I really don’t see any point in accepting it.”

“Don’t be afraid of me. Please. You don’t have to be. Not ever.”

“I’m not afraid. Not… _really_ , at least. Honestly? I feel kind of sorry for you.”

“Well, at least one person does.”

“Goodbye. I’ll… I’ll take care of the dogs until… Until.”

Molly escaped. Knowing more than she did before, but oblivious to her husband’s nightmares of finishing Dolarhyde’s job on her. Love didn’t die with the end of a marriage, and Will was certain he still loved her. Admired her. She was not made for the particular part of the world he had dragged her into, but she had found her way out. She had survived in a world where good-natured people ended up on someone’s plate on the regular. ‘Takes a pinch more than luck,’ Hannibal had said.

The divorce papers ended up being signed in Will's absence.


	4. Chapter 4

One day, he had been told, and he would be free to go home. Will lay in bed contemplating the fact he no longer _had_ a home. The house was Molly’s, but he knew he wouldn’t have wanted to return if it wasn’t. The Dragon had been there more recently than him, and there were easier things than remembering the face of Francis Dolarhyde whenever he made breakfast in the very same kitchen he had stood in, waiting to kill his family. He’d sold the house in Wolf Trap a long time ago, along with the boat. The motel room with its broken mirror and water stains on the carpet was as infested by the very presence of the Dragon as his former home in Maine. It slowly dawned on him that he really didn’t have anywhere to go. Life had stood still while he’d been trapped in a rainstorm in Central Baltimore. The questions of basic living had been so far away. They were slowly catching up with him.

Bored out of his mind and unable to watch news reports that were still analysing the FBI’s biggest failure as of yet, the desire to give in and indulge himself got harder and harder to ignore. The desire to share the weight of his sorrows, if only for a little while. They were able to keep his _body_ from entering, but Will’s mind was a difficult thing to keep out, haunting and intrusive as it was.

The pendulum was obsolete in Hannibal’s case. Slipping into his mind was as easy as waking up in the morning. A single blink, and there he was, seeing the small piece of reality accessible from Hannibal’s bed. He felt a dull, throbbing pain in his abdomen, somehow still familiar, even after all that time. The disorienting dizziness caused by a fever was also nothing less than an old friend to Will. The numbness in his legs was new. Reconstructing what Hannibal had done was a quick affair, once Will had come to the realisation that Hannibal had to have been aware of Chiyoh’s presence. Disregarding sanitary caution in order to encourage infection was a simple task. Hiding it from the doctors long enough for the infection to really fester was harder, but Hannibal had been one of them once. He knew what he was doing. No sign of a loss of confidence. It made Will smile. More so when it came to him that he was the reason, telling Hannibal he wouldn’t die in a tone of voice that allowed no argument.

Will didn’t leave Hannibal’s mind as he fell asleep, entirely certain that somewhere on the floor above him, Hannibal’s lids fluttered closed at the very same time as his own.

 

 

—

 

 

He woke up in the middle of the night. Sitting up and looking around the room, he couldn’t see anything out of place. He made sure he was alone. He was. The only thing not being as it had been before was a certain agitation inside of him. An atmosphere of departure. _It’s tonight, isn’t it?_ Of course it was.

He thought of Molly, briefly. She hadn’t asked to have the ring back, so it was now no longer a symbol of their connection, but just a piece of gold, warmed by his skin. It would quickly grow cold if he took it off. He took it off. Put it on the nightstand for whoever to find in the morning. He didn’t plan to be here for that. Could he check himself out at 2:41AM? Who would stop him if he simply walked out the door?

There was a duffel bag on the floor. Molly had brought it with her one day, filled with an assortment of clothes from his motel room. Not much, but a decent enough wardrobe. A bunch of button-up shirts, two t-shirts, some pants, clean socks and underwear, his favourite sweater. He threw the empty bag on the bed.

He turned on the light in the bathroom and saw himself in the mirror. For the first time in the week and a half he had spent in the hospital, he looked at his reflection. The wound in his cheek had begun to heal over. He could still remember sticking his tongue _through_ it once on the way to the hospital, before it had gotten stitched up. He shuddered at the feeling now. Getting the stitches out would require him to visit the hospital one more time. But then again, he did know how to do it himself.

He pulled his t-shirt over his head and inspected the bandage on his shoulder. It scraped his skin a bit when he moved, a distinctly unpleasant sensation. He ripped it off in one swift movement, wincing at the pain. The wound in his shoulder looked even better. He explored the range of movement his right arm had already regained. The result was slightly disappointing, but not quite as bad as he’d feared.

Meeting his own eyes in the mirror, he remembered Georgia. Believing herself to be dead already, a ghost, she had been unable to truly look at herself and meet her reflection’s gaze. But he was able. He was neither dead nor a ghost. Not incapable of intervening, not incapable of deciding. Deciding, he found, was a strange thing. He was free to decide, but only because a lot of options had already been crossed out on the list of possibilities. He had decided once already, on a rainy night when options had still been plentiful, and had been greeted with a knife to the gut. This time around, his stab wounds were already healing, and maybe that made all the difference.

He threw random articles of clothing into the duffel bag, followed by his toothbrush. _Never run away without your toothbrush, kiddo_ , his father had told him once, certain he would, one day, leave and look for a better life elsewhere. Will had never even thought about running away.

 _There’ll come a day when you’ll regret this_.

He turned off the lights and left.

 

 

—

 

 

He made his way to the staircase. _And then down, down, always down, and then out._ The nightly hospital hallway with its cold neon lights had become familiar to him during all his wandering around past midnight. He knew the night nurses’ routine, knew just when they visited each patient, when they allowed themselves a break. Two of them walked past him. They’d seen him walking around in the middle of the night several times, and none of them paid him any mind anymore. He had never done anything while he’d been under close scrutiny by just about anyone from the FBI to nurse Mary Duncan. They were getting lax with him.

There was noise on the floor above him. It had gone on for a while, but it had grown louder now. The two nurses raised their heads to the ceiling. “CA,” said one of them. They weren’t responsible for that floor, but their faces showed worry. A willingness to help. “Some poor devil up there is fighting right now.”

They continued walking, leaving Will’s line of hearing. Almost. His ears were attuned to the name, and so he managed to make out a whispered “Lecter” among hushed words, followed by what sounded like a heartfelt “Yeah, if only it was him.”

Will’s steps slowed. He listened carefully, trying to discern which room above the noise was coming from. But he couldn’t. The floor was thick and muffled half the sound. His own heart felt heavier at once, beating out of rhythm, making his chest flutter with discomfort and fear. _It’s not Hannibal. They’re only talking._

Will’s feet felt numb when he set them on the first step leading him upstairs.

 

 

—

 

 

The door to the room next to Hannibal’s was wide open. Will couldn’t see the bed, surrounded as it was by hospital staff trying to save some poor man’s life. Air left his lungs in a rush, and he almost gasped in relief, only to berate himself for feeling relieved when there was a man dying that very moment, not ten feet away from him.

The agents in front of Hannibal’s door weren’t looking to their left. They ignored that Hell had broken loose around them, and since their looks were trained on the wall opposite of them, they didn’t see Will standing half behind the wall by the stairs. Their perfectly synchronous, almost statue-like stillness reminded him of the day they had given him all the reasons for why he would never become an agent himself. An opportunity passed; he had seen it like that back then. Now, he was sure he had dodged a bullet that day.

His attention returned to the dying patient’s room when a nurse left it, pushing a medical cart with several utensils in front of her, steel polished and glistening whenever she moved. She closed the door behind her quietly, stripped off her gloves, and raised her hands to remove her surgical mask. It wouldn’t have been necessary. Will had already recognised her, dark-brown eyes, black hair (longer now than she had worn it back when they had first met) arranged into a neat bun, her every movement slow and measured. A woman who wasn’t known to do anything by halves.

Their eyes met, and Will thought he could see the smallest of smiles play around her lips as she saw him, duffel bag slung over his shoulder, so ready to leave in a hurry, so willing to run again. Though her mouth showed evidence of her mocking him, her eyes posed a serious question. _Will you or won’t you?_ Will didn’t doubt for a second that she would do what she had come to do with or without him.

She gave him time to decide while she was sorting the utensils on her cart, putting the scalpels where he could see them. The fingers of his right hand twitched slightly. He rolled his right shoulder, testing its limits once more. Unnecessarily, surely. He had sliced a man open with the wound still fresh and bleeding.

He took a step forward, mirroring Chiyoh’s calculated movements. Her eyes flicked up to him briefly, even as she kept her face lowered. Then, she straightened her back, and continued pushing the cart down the hallway, towards Hannibal’s room, slowly, creeping.

Will followed her. He had made a decision, and his decision was to ignore the scalpels. The agents shared  a look. One of them turned to Will. “Sir, you are not granted permission. Step back!” Will punched him in the face. Half a second later, he heard a wet gurgle come from the second man. As he turned his head, he saw the handle of a scalpel stick out of his throat, red pouring onto the linoleum floor. He was still reaching for his gun while toppling over, and the weapon slid across the floor when his hand relaxed.

The agent Will had punched sank to the ground. His right arm _had_ regained enough of its strength, even though pain shot through him from fingertips to shoulder blades. He stifled a hiss, not willing to let Chiyoh notice his obvious weakness. The doorway was free now, and Will pushed the door open, not caring about leaving fingerprints. There was exactly one suspect, and it wasn’t Chiyoh. Jack would know who to look for.

Chiyoh held him back, putting a hand on his shoulder and forcing him to look at her. “I am not sure you should be here.”

He pushed past her, rougher than necessary. “Well, good luck getting me to leave.”

“We should kill the second one. It’s safer that way.”

“Do it if you want to. It doesn’t make much of a-”

Will’s eyes met Hannibal’s from across the room. There were pearls of sweat on his forehead and red blotches on his cheeks. He was even paler now, deathly pale, eyes glassed over, but open. Always open. Always watching. His gaze was steadier than that of a man so feverish had any right to be. “Have you come to save me, Will?”

There were a thousand things Will wanted to say, but he knew that time was working against them, and he had beaten the odds too many times in the past few weeks already to count on being lucky enough to escape another time.

Chiyoh went to work immediately, snapping on a pair of surgical gloves and beginning to pull out several tubes that connected Hannibal’s arm to the machines. The unnecessary ones first. Then, she vanished for a moment. Will used the minute that bought him to get some words out. The truth. “I wanted to go downstairs, at first. I was on my way down, and then I heard some nurses talk about an emergency. And I decided to come, because I couldn’t bear the thought of you dying. Been afraid you would die on me for quite a while now.”

Hannibal blinked. Some emotion crossed his face, but it was gone too fast, and Will didn’t want to go in search of it. “Now that I am alive and well-”

Will huffed a laugh, imitating Chiyoh and removing one of the two tubes on Hannibal’s other arm. He was careful, deciding to be gentle now. “You’re anything but alive and well. And you’re not yet safe. And now that I’m here, I might as well make sure you will be.”

Hannibal’s mouth opened to reply, but his eyes flicked to his left and lit up with some distant memory. Chiyoh had returned, none-too-gently transporting the unconscious agent to the bed. It took Will a moment to remember the way Abel Gideon had been taken from the hospital. Jack had told him back then, about the night that had opened the gates out of the BSHCI and into freedom for him. Chiyoh had truly learned from the very best.

“It was a good thing you decided not to kill him, after all,” she remarked before connecting the agent to the heart monitor in Hannibal’s stead. “He is more useful that way.”

Will looked at the wall opposite the bed, contemplating the strange circumstance of another patient suffering a heart attack at the most fortunate of moments. “Plotting someone’s death, even while nearly dying yourself?”

Hannibal chuckled. His voice was roughened, his throat obviously hoarse. “It was Chiyoh’s doing. I have hardly the means to induce cardiac arrest in anybody. But myself, as you so aptly pointed out.”

“You know what I meant.”

“So I do.”

“The hallway was empty. And wasn’t that the purpose of all that?”

“I trust the staff in this facility enough to bring whoever suffered sudden death in my stead back to life.”

“ _Facility_. You _have_ spent too much time in the psych ward.”

“We need to get going,” Chiyoh reminded the both of them. “Will, help me.”

Trying to remember that night in the future, Will was never sure about how they managed to really sneak the most infamous patient in that hospital’s history out of the building and into the car. Maybe he had simply suppressed the memory of looking around so often on the nightly parking lot, expecting lights and shouted warnings and gunfire any second.

What he did remember was the black SUV, which was not unlike the one Jack usually used, with a Belgian license plate and two people in the front seats: Lady Murasaki and, behind the wheel, the man of nondefinable age who had been so engrossed in orthodontics a few days ago. Robertus Lecter in the flesh. Chiyoh was gone, vanished like an apparition after her work was done.

The other thing he remembered was Hannibal’s head in his lap and his own worries about whether he would make it through a longer drive to _wherever the hell_ without any machine keeping him alive. Hannibal must have lost consciousness somewhere on the way from point A to point B, and now Will was left with nothing to do but card his fingers through his hair and wonder. Wonder. He leaned his head against the window. The rain was still pouring down, running down the glass, making the world outside blur and swim, and he was drowning again, drowning, drowning, Hannibal once again in his arms, dying, dying. Back to the beginning.

“Are you coming with us?” Robertus looked at him in the rear-view mirror, mildly surprised, but trying to hide it behind a mask of amused kindness. Not worried in the slightest. One day, he would have to ask them for the family secret to endless amounts of optimism.

Will panted out a laugh, perplexed and in pain. His shoulder was nearly killing him at this point, he was cold and wet from walking through the rain, and the adrenaline in his veins caused a tremor to run through his entire body. “I guess so.”

Robertus nodded and started the motor without another word, leaving the parking lot behind.

Will turned to look out the rear window and found the windows of his hospital room with ease. The lights were on now, and shadows moved behind the curtains, obviously searching the room. They were looking for him now. But they wouldn’t find him. His fingers in Hannibal’s hair resumed their movements. They wouldn’t find him ever again.

Shortly after they left Baltimore, the rain let up.


End file.
